Status Report on the Energy Amplifier

0ne year after its first presentation,the Energy Amplifier (EA) Project holds its promises for a environmentally acceptable form of energy extraction from nuclei, namely to eliminate or at least greatly reduce(i) the environmental impact of the long-lived highly radioactive waste;(ii) the possibility of diversions toward military applications;(iii) the risks of an accidental divergence related to the critical operation of the chain reaction and (iv) make a more efficient use of a fuel which is less radio-toxic to extract and more abundant on Earth than Uranium. In these respects the EA (or equivalent scenarios from Los Alamos and elsewhere) is comparable in performance to Thermonuclear Fusion. Bot h approches offer pratically unl;imited fuel resources: the energetic content of Lithium on the Earth's crust needed by Fusion is estimated to be seven times the one of Thorium and they are both adequate for millions of years of very intensived utilisation.However the EA can be built economically,in a variety of sizes and it offers a much greater flexibility of utilisation. Moreover it presents no major new technological barriers and it is far more suited because of its simplicity as an alternative to fossil fuels and to respond to the growing energy demands of the developing countries. A test has been performed at the CERN-PS to demonstrate experimentally that it is possible to ''amplify'' the energy deposition of a high energy cascade to such an extent as to potentially recover the energy of the incident beam and to make in addition a considerable net energy gain. In the experimental conditions of this investigation (far from optimal),the energy produced by the cascade has been typically some thirty times the one delivered by the beam and it confirms the validity of our previous predictions on the EA ,then based only on Montecarlo. The results of the test and the perspectives of future work will be discussed.